GIS a Mission-Critical Tech for Public Health

GIS is mission critical for public health, says Carl Kinkade, geospatial information system specialist at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control, a federal health research agency. CDC offers a number of GIS-driven health maps, many of which pull data from state health departments, he says. Reportable diseases include flu, TB, STDs and HIV, he says. All the states are required to track them and we have an overarching national reporting system of national surveillance. GIS is spread across CDC centers and divisions.

The CDC primarily relies on ESRI software, but has incorporated GIS software from other sources as well, including Google and QGIS, a free, open source application (QGIS.org) formerly known as Quantum GIS.